An ever-more confident Newt Gingrich has seen his campaign for Republican Presidential candidate spring into the lead this week. Gingrich has a 11.3 per cent lead over current second place nominee Mitt Romney, and is 12 points ahead of Hermain Cain in the latest Iowa Caucus, according to Real Clear Politics. “It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee,” Gingrich told ABC News on Thursday.
But his confidence might have been deflated after a new black-and-white web video from the Ron Paul campaign — featuring Glenn Beck and several other conservative icons — accuses him of being two-faced. The two minute YouTube video, entitled Newt Gingrich: Serial hypocrisy, has had almost half a million hits since being uploaded on Wednesday.
The Paul campaign has accused Gingrich of not being a “consistent conservative,” and the video reminds viewers of allegations that Gingrich received millions of dollars from Freddie Mac and health care companies, as well as showing him alongside House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, saying that “our country must take action to address climate change” in a TV commercial.
Gingrich said his appearance in the video alongside Pelosi was the “dumbest mistake I ever made,” and denies ever working as a lobbyist.
The Youtube ad will not air on television, but the Paul campaign plans to send it to its “far-reaching e-mail list of conservative voters”. Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign chairman, said in a statement released Wednesday that his campaign “is making a bold move to debunk the myth that the Newt we are seeing on the 2012 campaign trail is the conservative he has been touted to be all along.”
Gingrich’s press secretary R.C. Hammond denied any notion that the former speaker isn’t conservative enough to be to be president.
“No candidate in the race has achieved more conservative reform of government or spent more time and energy championing the cause of the conservative movement than Newt Gingrich, which is why voters across the country are choosing Newt over Mitt Romney,” he said.
With such sharp accusations abound, Republican voters may be worried that whoever emerges from the fight for GOP candidacy might be too beaten and bloodied to compete next November in the ultimate race against President Obama.
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